OCTOBER 2007 NEWS

october 28, 2007

Photo Gallery Updates

Over the weekend I have done a few photo gallery updates. They are as noted below.

World Series (Carrie Underwood sings the national anthem before Game 3 of the Major League Baseball's World Series between the Colorado Rockies and the Boston Red Sox in Denver October 27, 2007). I uploaded some photos from this event.

Carnival Ride Photos - I had previously had scans of photos from this album. They have now been replaced with the original photos, some medium size and others very very large. I have included the ones in the booklet of Carnival Ride which are hard to see. View them here.

WMZQ 98.7 - Carrie stopped by WMZQ to do serveral meet and greets, interviews, and photo ops to promote her World Series National Anthem. She also talked about Carnival Ride and signed albums for various fans. Around 80 photos of this event were added to the gallery over the weekend. View them here.

october 26, 2007

Chase Crawford talks about Carrie Underwood

You have seen the photos of Carrie Underwood and Chase Crawford around New York City and other places. But how did they meet? Chase Crawford revals to OK! Magazine that he met Carrie "Through friends of friends," says Chase.

He went on to say "I love country music and she's very classy." When asked if they were exclusive, he said "I don't know about that," he tells OK!. "We're just hanging, having a good time, dating around. It's good."

Gallery Updates

The photo gallery has been updated with captures from the Target DVD which includes Carrie Underwood in the studio recording Carnival Ride, at the writers retreat writing the songs, being interviewed, and performing various tracks from the album in sessions. (visit DVD gallery here).

Also, photos from Carrie on Regis & Kelly have been added here.

I have uploaded 11 photos from Carrie's interview with WSIX Radio which was done on October 19th, 2007 to promote her new album, Carnival Ride, now in stores. There's a video of this interview (Thanks to Vinman) and I am working on a new multimedia section. Hopefully I will be able to add the video soon. Click here for theses photos.

The gallery has also been updated with candid photos of Carrie Underwood with Chase Crawford in NYC, released late yesterday. There have been reports that Carrie is dating Chase, but both of them have been quoted as stating that it's just simply friendship at this point. Visit the gallery here for those photos.

Also, don't forget to catch Carrie on The Early Show which airs at 7 a.m. in the morning. Carrie's segment for the show was taped yesterday. I have added five photos from that taping. You can find those here in The Early Show photo gallery.

I have also added five candids of Carrie leaving New York City yesterday. She is due on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno in a few days, so it is believed that she's headed to California to film that show. We will keep you posted on pictures of her there. View her leaving NYC photos here.

october 25, 2007

Carrie Underwood to perform on Movie Rocks

Carrie Underwood, along with Jennifer Hudson, is set to perform on Movie Rocks. The live event will be taped on Sunday, December 2 and will be broadcast on Friday, December 7 from 9:00PM to 11:00PM ET/PT on CBS,

Listen to Ever Ever After by Carrie Underwood

You can now listen to "Ever Ever After" by Carrie Underwood from the soundtrack to the movie "Enchanted". The Enchanted Movie myspace now has the soundtrack playing. The movie will be released in Theatres around November 20th, 2007. Back in August, Carrie shot a video for this song in LA. To refresh your memorie, view the photos. Below is a clip, to hear the entire song, please visit the Enchanted Movie's official myspace.

october 24, 2007

Carrie Underwood Photo Updates

Just an update that I added the photos from Good Morning America a few days ago and also pictures from Carrie's 3 days writers retreat in Nashville where she began to write Carnival Ride in the picture gallery.

october 22, 2007

Self Magazine- Behind The Scenes

Self Magazine recently done a video shoot with Carrie Underwood to celebrate the upcoming release of Carnival Ride. We have a video that you can currently stream below. I will add about 30 screen captures from this video tomarrow.

Be sure to catch Carrie on Television in the morning to promote the release of Carnival Ride! Stay tuned to this website for all of the latest pictures and videos reguarding the celebrations in New York!. Stream (click here) the video.

Carnival Ride - Critics Choice By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: October 22, 2007

“Carnival Ride”

Thanks to Jessica for emailing new Carnival Ride photos. On her new album, “Carnival Ride,” Carrie Underwood has done something clever: She resisted the urge to de-Carrie Underwood herself. This CD isn’t full of rootsy, old-fashioned songs straining for NPR credibility. It’s not a mad dash into the dance-pop mainstream. It’s not an unvarnished collection of ostentatiously personal confessions.

Instead it’s a straight-up Carrie Underwood album, and a very good one, with a handful of romps and laments that exist mainly to set the stage for the big-voiced, ’80s-influenced, Southern-accented power ballads she sings so well. Much more than any of her fellow “American Idol” winners (and more than the losers too) she has become a mainstream pop star without much departing from that show’s musical formula. When she rears back and lets the high notes fly, she still sounds as if she were out to impress the judges.

Certainly “Carnival Ride” is likely to impress the six million armchair judges who bought her 2005 debut album, “Some Hearts.” Like her fellow country balladeer Martina McBride, Ms. Underwood often uses tragic stories to balance her relentless optimism. In “Just a Dream,” which must be the most harrowing song to emerge from the “Idol” conglomerate so far, a military widow tries to disbelieve away the bad news. And her cover of “I Told You So,” a late-’80s hit by Randy Travis, is a surprisingly effective melodramatization; compared with his rather quiet, wistful version, hers is downright operatic.

She’s a bit less convincing when she’s having more fun, or pretending to. The CD’s low point might be the “Whoo!” she delivers in “Last Name,” after explaining, “It started off, ‘Hey, Cutie, where you from?’/And then it turned into, ‘Oh, no, what have I done?’/And I don’t even know his last name.” And she needs all the good cheer she can muster (which is plenty) to redeem “The More Boys I Meet,” which is essentially a novelty coffee mug set to music. (The line ends: “the more I love my dog.”)

She’s not wrong, though, to believe that one of her high notes is enough to make everything else seem inconsequential. In “Crazy Dreams,” one of a few songs she helped write, there’s an electric guitar and a jolly banjo and an inspirational message: “Here’s to you longshots, you dark horse runners/Hairbrush singers and dashboard drummers.” Yes, it sounds like a TV commercial. But there’s a good reason TV commercials sound like that. KELEFA SANEH.

october 20, 2007

Carnival Ride Exclusive CD will include DVD Interview (Only at Target)

This website reported a few months ago that a DVD of Carrie performing songs from her new album Carnival Ride would be released. Now, Target announces the same thing.

You can pick up Carnival Ride exclusively at Target and it will include a bonus DVD which includes interviews with Carrie. She also performs 4 songs on her CD acoustically. Tracks include So Small, Get Out Of This Town, Just A Dream, The More Guys I Meet (The More I Love MY Dog).

There's a story behind Carrie's 'Last Name', Writing process Explained (Source: USA.COM)

Pictured to your left: At the Ryman Auditorium: Carrie Underwood, left, worked with top Nashville songwriters, including Aimee Mayo, left, and Rivers Rutherford. Click on picture to enlarge. Photo © Chris Hollo

To understand the process, here is an excert from a recently released article from USA today as well, which you can read here.

The three-day retreat at the Ryman offered Underwood such a pause. In a place where Hank Williams and Patsy Cline once sang, where Johnny Cash taped his ABC variety show, Underwood got to write with such top tunesmiths as Craig Wiseman, whose credits include Tim McGraw's Live Like You Were Dying.

"Each morning at the Ryman, the songwriters broke up into groups of two or three to write in the venue's dressing rooms. Underwood would team up with writing partners, but she would also roam from room to room throughout the day, acting as a sort of quality-control expert for works in progress.

"If you can catch somebody in the beginning stages of a song and say, 'I don't think I'd sing it that way,' or 'This isn't a subject matter I really want to talk about,' nobody wastes time," she says.

In the evenings, the writers recorded demos of the day's songs on the Ryman stage with Underwood's producer, Mark Bright.

"That was a little nerve-wracking," says songwriter Luke Laird. "You've just finished this song, and you're going to try to put it down in front of the producer of the record and whoever else is hanging around. But it was cool -- there's something about that pressure. There were some great songs written there."

A similar retreat after Underwood's 2005 American Idol win yielded three songs for Some Hearts. Although Underwood says she left February's retreat with enough material to fill multiple CDs, only Twisted -- written the first day by Laird and Jesus, Take the Wheel co-writers Hillary Lindsey and Brett James -- made the final cut for Carnival Ride.

Still, the event served its larger purpose of better acquainting Underwood and the writers. The ones at the retreat account for 11 of the 13 songs on Carnival Ride.

Story Behind "Last Name"

Story by Brian Mansfield, Special for USA TODAY
Three of the four songs that Carrie Underwood co-wrote for Carnival Ride play directly to her image.

So Small, All-American Girl and Crazy Dreams are full of hope, optimism and fairy-tale endings.The fourth one is a whole other story.

Last Name, which Underwood wrote with Luke Laird and Hillary Lindsey, follows a dance-floor encounter that spirals out of control.

"It started off, 'Hey, cutie, where you from?'/And then turned into 'Oh, no, what have I done?' " Underwood sings in the chorus. By the song's end, its central character is waking up groggy in Las Vegas, "and I'm not sure how I got here or how this ring on my left hand just appeared out of nowhere."

In much the way that Underwood has never been the bat-wielding, car-keying girlfriend of Before He Cheats, she says she has never had an alcohol-induced blackout.

"Negative! No!" she says. But she acknowledges that the song was inspired by personal experience.

"I met a guy at an after-party and asked him his last name three times, but it never stuck," Underwood says. "He got my number, we talked a few times, and I didn't know what his last name was. I was way past the point where I should have known his last name, and if I asked him, I knew it would offend him."

The story had to become a sitcom episode or a country song. Underwood opted for the latter.So if Underwood has never been drunk enough to elope to Vegas, how drunk has she been?

"Never drunk enough to embarrass myself," she says.

october 19, 2007

Carrie Underwood on the November cover of Seventeen

Listen up Carrie Underwood fans, you'll want to check this out! In our November issue, Carrie gives Seventeen a glimpse into her post-American Idol existence and new-found fame!

In the exclusive interview, Carrie talks about her upbringing in Oklahoma and tells the truth about Dallas QB cutie Tony Romo!

Find out what you never knew about Carrie...like what she looks for in a guy, her secret pleasures and even her weird food habit!

Turn to pg. 94 of the November issue to see the complete interview. Plus, log on to seventeen.com for more!

Entertainment Weekly Photos

Eighteen photos from the upcoming issue of Entertainment Weekly have been added to the gallery. Click here to view them. Watch behind the scenes video at the online EW site.

Carrie Underwood Cleans Her Closet (Source: GAC website)

October 18, 2007 — Carrie Underwood still keeps in touch with friends from high school, college and of course her new life in Nashville, but she has found that fame brings changes in how people perceive her.

Carrie tells Dial-Global she wishes people wouldn't change their feelings toward her just because of her fame. "I really wish that people that knew me before would treat me the same way," she says. "If they hated me and they talked bad about me, I wish they'd still do that [laughs]. At least that'd be true.

"I do get a lot of people that only call me when they want something, and they don't get my new number when I change it," she continues. "I call it cleaning my closet — you have to figure out who likes you for you and who genuinely cares about you, and [figure out] the people that just want something. And those people gotta go 'cause they'll never be any good in your life at all."

In support of her new album, Carnival Ride, which hits stores Tuesday, Carrie will be busy in the coming week with TV appearances. Her first performance is part of the Grand Ole Opry's 82nd Birthday Bash Celebration on Saturday, when she makes the television debut of her co-written single, "So Small," on GAC's "Opry Live." Additional appearances include "Good Morning America" on October 23 where she'll perform live in Times Square, "Live with Regis and Kelly" on October 24, and CBS's "The Early Show" on October 26.

After wrapping up in New York City next week, Carrie will head to Los Angeles for an appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" on October 29, followed by a performance on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" on November 5. Then look for Carrie to make her third appearance on the CMA Awards, where she is a triple nominee, on November 7. She is also slated for another appearance on "The Late Show with David Letterman" November 13.

october 7th, 2007

Carnival Ride Track Information Plus New Photoshoot Photo

In an updated biography located in the newly designed carrieunderwoodofficial.com, Carrie talks about tracks on the new album Carnival Ride. From the biography:

""All-American Girl" turns the story of a baby girl born to a man praying for a boy into a celebration of femininity. If there is a bit of autobiography in the song--Carrie is the youngest of three daughters--there is even more in "Crazy Dreams," an ode to "long shots" and a celebration of the fact that "even crazy dreams come true," something she knows better than almost anyone.

"Last Name" is a bit of pure fun celebrating reckless abandon, and is one of two songs Carrie wrote with Hillary Lindsey. The other is the album's first single, "So Small," a song that announces the new project as a major step forward. With "So Small" Carrie focuses on what’s important in life and not worrying about the small things. It also focuses on the strength of her voice and personality, instilling it with freshness and relevance."

A new photoshoot photo that we have seen before has now been added to the gallery. Click here to view it.